“This is so 2004”, people say to me occasionally when I opt for bare legs in summer and tights in winter. The refrain we’ve all heard and repeat ourselves about pantyhose is that pantyhose are over, done with, finished. Bare legs have won and they’re here to stay.
Nobody below a certain age seems able to contest this, and they say it like settled science, factual rather than something that was a preference when it arrived sometime near 2005 and simply refused to budge. It makes no sense to me. Or at least it doesn’t have to. I’ve repeated this particular conversation enough times now across enough weddings, offices, gatherings that I’ve stopped pretending to be polite and started building actual arguments.
The “bare legs ALWAYS” rule fails completely once you introduce actual weather/occasions
If you live for photograph you’ll do absolutely fine with bare legs all year round. California in June can pretty much set your schedule. But February in Denver? Fuck that. Standing outside a crematorium for twenty minutes because the cousin twice removed insisted he was “just horsing around in the closet” as wind slices off the mountains is not “dress appropriately and you can’t fail”. I’ve seen too many perfectly-coiffed women in that scenario, dressed exactly right per all of 2024’s standards, literally turning grey around the shins insisting they’re “just fine”.
They’re not fine. They’ve just decided that the visible goosebumps aren’t worth the social cost of wearing tights, which speaks volumes about how well this entire rule treats actual women. It’s not about comfort, it’s about what other people think you should wear. Something current.
My sister wore sheer black tights to work last winter and was asked (twice, by different people) if she was okay/unwell. As though hosiery were an indicator. That’s how strongly this rule is enforced now. Not “I personally would dress differently” but “you don’t look well”, which feels like a bizarre place for a piece of clothing to be, short of actually signalling illness. Clothing should not make you ask that question. I made some variation of this argument whilst out dinner recently and was given the same treatment by another friend. Mild concern couched as compliments on my dress oh by no wait definitely not my legs.
And this is the part that irritates me about it rather than just chuckling at it: it will not admit that occasions exist. Occasions that used to wholly determine this sort of thing back when people cared about something dressing for something rather than just whatever was barest. A wedding at 11 AM inside a church with stone floors is NOT THE SAME AS A ROOFTOP EVENT IN JULY. And trying to dress them both with the same “bare legs are the look now” mindset is how you end up shivering because you couldn’t possibly wear tights at a wedding. As if that rule was ever about you.
I’d love to know who it was that decided comfort and formality no longer mattered insofar as they applied to legs. Because she didn’t think that through. Nobody thought that through. It just sort of happened like these things do, everyone suddenly and then retroactively when it’s too late as though it had been obvious all along.
The fabric got BETTER than it used to be, which broke the original argument against it
This, of course, isn’t the whole half of the equation, the part people always skip. But pantyhose in 2024 are not the same product as pantyhose in 1994. Hell, they aren’t the same as what I was forced to wear in 2014. I have a pair from around 2003 that I keep for stubbornness and also as a reminder, and holding them up next to anything you’d find while shopping now is an education. The denier is finer, they don’t roll down by lunchtime, and they move with you rather than snapping back at every step like a toddler’s stretchy sock. The look we actually hate when we say we hate tights, that shiny, slightly orange, undeniably “hosiery” look doesn’t exist like it used to in any pair that’s not cheap. It’s been replaced with something far closer to invisible, which yes is what you’re going for if you’re trying to wear tights and also not have them look like tights.
I wore a pair all of last winter, matte, totally opaque without that stupid thick fabric that just screams SCHOOL GIRL. Sat in them. Stood in them. Took an unexpected staircase sprint in heels in them. No runs. No noticing them after the first few minutes like my lower legs were suddenly encased inView Tortilla Chips. Came out the other side looking like I did when I went in, not like I’d attempted to sweat my pants off all day. That isn’t negligible. That, if I’m being honest, was better fabric performance than I got from actual trousers that year. I did NOT think for one hot second that I would be making an argument in favour of tights OVER trousers but here we are and I AM STANDING BY IT. In printing. Because more than any other “improvement”/”new thing” being pushed out this year tights are legitimately better than they were.
When someone tells me pantyhose are too “last decade” what they *actually* mean when pressed is that cheap ones were too “last decade” and they decided the entire category must’ve shared that feeling. Which isn’t debateable. It’s nostalgia talking about the present like it knows better than women who live in and buy clothes.
I’ve worn some form of sheer black tights through three legitimately different decades at this point. Under three completely different sets of rules about what was acceptable and what wasn’t. And I can tell you, hand on heart, which decade had it right. And it wasn’t the last one, the one we’re all suddenly romantic about right now.
It’s this one. This, dumbfucking_magic neck_deep_in_tights season where they “don’t work anymore”.
I am absolutely not saying I wear them all the time, I don’t. Bare legs are great, they have a season and I am not immune to putting them out. But them being OVER like everyone acts like they did and no-one will ever admit? No thank you. Cold rooms still exist. Long days where you’re required to stand around still exist. A fucking fabric that got BETTER in the last twenty years exists whether you’ll admit it’s socially acceptable or not.
I will continue to wear mine, and continue to be asked if I’m feeling alright by people who couldn’t possibly understand why. And I will continue to be right, and warmer than every woman who insists they’re cold despite it.
